Editorial: So much for competition

Friday, July 22, 2005 | 4:49 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

July 23-24, 2005

This past week Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., introduced legislation that would repeal restrictions on airline flights that have been imposed on Dallas' Love Field, which is where Southwest Airlines is headquartered. The current federal restrictions are so severe that people from 43 states, including Nevada, can't make direct flights to Dallas' Love Field on Southwest, the busiest airline at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport. The restrictions, pushed through Congress in 1979 by then-Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright -- whose district included Fort Worth, Texas -- were designed to assist a competing airport, Dallas-Fort Worth, which at the time was relatively new. The irony of the restrictions on Dallas' Love Field is that they were put into law just one year after Congress deregulated the airline industry in 1978 to benefit consumers.

The restrictions on Love Field, if they ever made sense, certainly don't today. Dallas-Fort Worth Airport now is the world's sixth-busiest airport, so it sure doesn't need help. But the opposition to Ensign's legislation is strong nonetheless, as both of Texas' U.S. senators -- Republicans Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, usually thought of as free-market conservatives -- are opposed to removing these outdated government restrictions. This is a case where they reflexively are trying to protect the financial interests of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and American Airlines, the airport's dominant carrier that fears competition from Southwest.

Even Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, one of the most right-wing members of the Senate, opposes Ensign's legislation. In fact, after Ensign introduced his bill, Inhofe introduced legislation that would effectively shut down Love Field, barring any flights with 56 passengers or more from using the airport. Inhofe had the chutzpah to call his anti-competitive legislation the "True Competition Act." Inhofe's interest might not seem obvious at first since he isn't from Texas, but he is just doing the bidding of American Airlines, which is one of Oklahoma's largest employers, with 8,000 airline employees in Tulsa alone.

This is one of those issues where the public has a genuine opportunity to put to a test a member of Congress' stated free-market views -- and see whether they are just rhetoric. Inhofe, in the biography found on his Senate Web site, brags that he is "one of the leading conservative voices in the Senate," and "is a strong advocate of common sense Oklahoma values including less government, less regulation." What a joke. The corporate interests of American Airlines are being protected from competition by economic protectionism of the worst sort, while Southwest is further harmed because it can't expand and consumers are hurt because they have fewer choices, which results in higher fares.